Nancy Spero

When Nancy Spero returned to the United States in 1964 after several years in Paris, she was profoundly disturbed by the escalating war in Vietnam. She responded with a series of works that included this drawing, in which a bomb becomes an anthropomorphic form spewing sperm-like heads—smoky, messy, and seemingly blood stained. During the late 1960s, while Spero worked on this series, American media inundated the public with images of the conflict. The constant sight of bombs and helicopters defined Spero’s image of the war, shaping her feminist viewpoint as she brought attention to what she saw as masculine abuses of power.